The judges check out Andy Diehl, left, who competed in the most-creative category.

Photo By MARVIN PFEIFFER/STAFF

Tyler Lutz appears before the crowd as the theme song from 2001: A Space Odtssey plays in the background during the Alamo Beard Club's inagural Battle of Beards at the 502 Bar, 502 Embassy Oaks, on Oct. 6, 2012. Bearded men (and women with fake beards) competed in seven categories: partial beard, goatee, moustache, best groomed, women's beard, most creative and full beard. MARVIN PFEIFFER/ mpfeiffer@express-news.net

Photo By MARVIN PFEIFFER/STAFF

Wes Dunn, competing in the best groomed category, plays up to the crowd during the Battle of Beards.

Jack Ellison celebrates his best-of-show award with the crowd during the Alamo Beard Club's inagural Battle of Beards at the 502 Bar, 502 Embassy Oaks, on Oct. 6, 2012. Bearded men (and women with fake beards) competed in seven categories: partial beard, goatee, moustache, best groomed, women's beard, most creative and full beard. Ellison took first place in the moustache category. MARVIN PFEIFFER/ mpfeiffer@express-news.net

The Alamo Beard Club held its inaugural Battle of the Beards, and the turnout of "beardos" seeking flocculent fame was testimony that the tufted trend is growing on San Antonio like a well-tended Van Dyke. More than 200 fans crowded into the back of the 502 Bar to cheer on their well-whiskered friends, who flexed their facial follicles for the three judges.

From pileous pork chop sideburns to fleecy faces full of fur, beards have become a wild and woolly way to stand out. It's as if some guys are moisturizing with Rogaine and feeding their beards raw meat.

"It really blew up this year," said contest judge Jason Trevino, who sports a neatly trimmed face and tends to the beards of others at Matador Men's Grooming in Stone Oak. "We're seeing more and more of it."

Unlike other pursuits, bearding (as its called by the beardos) is the antithesis of most hobbies, which require participants to take up a hobby, task or obsession.

Bearding requires nothing other than the right chromosomes and enough testosterone to get 'er done.

"It's a cheap hobby," said contest judge Katie Rivera, who is the reigning Miss Fiesta and is beardless.

"You don't have to do anything," said Tyler Lutz, 26, godfather of the local beard movement.

"If you want it to get growth," said Andy Diehl, whose 11-inch-long beard was braided for competition, "you just let it grow."

A taste for beer helps, says "Taylor W.," the bearding stage name of a contest judge from Austin. His facial fluff was accessorized by an 18-inch-long handlebar mustache.

"We like to say 'We're a beard club with a drinking problem,' " he said.

Like most beardos, Taylor W. said the facial hair is secondary to the friendships. Guys with nothing in common - lawyers, sheet metal workers, teachers, students - grow beards and then grow friendships.

But as recently as two years ago, a beard club couldn't grow here. There were beards, but most were tame and functioned as places to catch soup.

These days, as evidenced by the contest, exotic and eccentric facial hair is more and more commonplace.

Much of the credit might go to Whisker Wars, a cable television reality series about the world of competitive bearding. The show highlighted the hirsute heroes of Beard Team USA, a West Coast club, and the Austin Facial Hair Club, located up I-35 in the state capital.

While men have always grown beards and few beardos care to credit the show, it can't be a coincidence that large-scale beard self-awareness appeared to the masses at the same time the show premiered.

Outlandish beards have been part of European culture for years, says Phil Olsen, founder of Beard Team USA, which has 100 local chapters and "encourages the use of performance enhancing substances."

He was traveling overseas in 1999 and stumbled on the World Beard and Moustache Championships in Ystad, Sweden.

He loved it, grabbed the idea and brought it back to the United States.

He is as perplexed as anyone about the deep psychological significance of bearding.

"I'm not sure I know why beards are so popular," Olsen said. "For one thing, it demonstrates that men will compete about anything.

A beard makes a man stand out, he said. People notice him and remember him months later even though he might not remember them.

"If you think about it, historically, the beard has been for someone who's been an independent thinker, a nonconformist and an individual," Olsen says. "It's a statement of originality and people recognize that."

He acknowledges the irony that "individuality" would catch on as a craze, but says the individualism is embodied in the style of the facial hair itself, not in bearding as an activity.

In San Antonio, bearding was born when Lutz and friend Wes Dunn started a club in early 2011.

Lutz didn't grow a beard to be noticed, but rather as a diversion.

"It was male pattern baldness," he said. "I shaved my head and thought it looked weird. I thought it would look better with a beard, so I grew it out."

Like many beards, the club wasn't growing quickly. Dunn moved. Lutz handed it off to another group of beardos, who have nurtured and nursed the piliferous membership into the hairy throng that showed up at the 502.

Every beard tells a story. Some grow out of defiance.

Justin Arce, 26, stopped shaving as result of a bet with family members.

Three months later, he collected on the bet and now sports a 4-inch-long, curly set of chin whiskers that morph into sideburns.

Dustin Salinas, 35, decided to grow his out when he left his job with a courier service, which banned employees from having beards. He's going to college and plans to keep it when he gets a public school teaching job.

Lutz, after failing to place at the contest, recently shaved his beard and is now starting over.

"I feel strange," he said. "I feel like an animal behind the bars at a zoo. Everyone is telling me, 'Hey! You have a chin.' "

"When I have a beard," he said wistfully, "it almost demands respect. People see you and think you're smarter or wiser than you really are."